Hey, whattaya know… they held another Turing Test, run by the man the A.I. cognoscente love to hate: Hugh Loebner. You of course know Lobner from John’s story at Salon about Loebner’s fight with the A.I. community.
And… surpise! A program that sucked at pretending to be a human being won… but as is the nature of these schemes, it was the program that sucked the least that took home the prize money. According to the Slashdot story, the bronze medal and $2000 boobie prize was awarded to ALICE, which has won three times in the past.
Damn, I missed it.
Loebner invited me to be a judge or a participant, but I never got around to accepting.
He very much liked my depiction of him in the Salon article. If I made him look like an obnoxious fool, at least I made him look like an interesting obnoxious fool, and one with an ability to laugh at himself. He said his ex-wife and all his ex-girlfriends agreed that it was a good portrait.
Maybe next year I’ll take him up on his offer to be a Loebner Prize judge, but for now I think I’m still kind of detoxing from the whole experience.
Hello John,
I was searching your Salon.com article for the reference whering you suggested that I was a fool for thinking I could hold the contest in my apartment.
I held the contest in my apartment with no great difficult, but I can not find the reference. Has the article been “corrected”? Or am I misremembering?
BTW, the invite is still open. I will be needing judges for the 2005 contest, Sun, Sept 18, 2005, Upper West Side, NYC. What do you say?
Hugh